A Study On Corporate Cultural Differences And Cultural Integration In German And Chinese Joint Ventures

Researching economic issues from the perspective of culture has become a new trend since the beginning of the 21 th century,of which a comparative study of corporate culture is an outstanding part.As a part of management theory,the study on corporate culture was initiated in the Western business world in 1980 s.It was since 1984 that books of “corporate culture” have begun to appear in our country.Corporate culture has gained a lot of attention from the business circle as well as the academic circle,because it can infuse a lot of vigor into a corporation continuously and bring both tangible and intangible economic benefits.Thus,it is believed by the author that it means a lot to improve the core competitiveness of a company by constructing an outstanding corporate culture.With the development of economic globalization,it is an inexorable trend for many corporations around the world to expand their markets and businesses as well as carrying out an optimal allocation of resources.After the strategy of “the Belt and Road Initiatives” has been put forward in China,many domestic corporations choose to go abroad and begin their transnational operations.With the prosperity of international trades,the issue of cross-cultural management develops quickly.Due to the fierce international competition environment and complex differences in cultures of different countries,it has become a new way to establish an outstanding corporate culture of joint ventures so as to decrease the cost of cross-cultural management.It is a prerequisite for joint ventures to discern and make cross-cultural integration in order to carry out an efficient cross-cultural management.Thus,the author believes that a contrastive study on the differences in corporate cultures between Chinese companies and foreign companies as well as an exploration of the potential problems and difficulties in cross-cultural management would help them a lot in their transnational operations,which is also a hot topic in joint ventures and the academic circle.At present,bilateral trades and cooperation between China and Germany are increasing.Compared with the Chinese culture,the German culture is possessed with its typical characters.Cultural collisions between them are quiet representative,but researches in this field are rather insufficient,so the author chooses to study the cultural differences in German and Chinese joint ventures.Hofstede's cultural dimension theory and Hall' high-context and low-context theory are mainly applied in this paper to study on the relationship between the national culture and corporate culture.A comparative analysis of corporate cultures of FAW and Volkswagen is made in order to figure out the specialties of corporate cultures of the two corporations.Besides,the analysis can also offer some advice for other domestic companies in their process of globalization.The paper has expounded the national cultural differences between China and Germany,and it also analyzes the differences in corporate cultures of the two countries and the cultural differences as well as some potential cultural conflicts in Sino-German joint ventures.After the analysis,some practical methods of cross-cultural integration have been put forward for Sino-German joint ventures.The author hopes that these methods can offer some meaningful advice to other Sino-foreign joint ventures in their cross-cultural management.